February 20, 2011

You Say al-Gaddafi, They Say al-Qaḏḏāfī, Let's Colonel The Whole Thing Off

Members of a Libyan army unit told Benghazi residents on Sunday they had defected and "liberated" Libya's second city from troops supporting veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, two residents said.

Habib al-Obaidi, who heads the intensive care unit at the main Al-Jalae hospital, and lawyer Mohamed al-Mana, told Reuters members of the "Thunderbolt" squad had arrived at the hospital with soldiers wounded in clashes with Gaddafi's personal guard.

"They are now saying that they have overpowered the Praetorian Guard and that they have joined the people's revolt," al-Mana said by telephone. It was not possible to independently verify the report.

Obaidi said the bodies of 50 people killed on Sunday had arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon. Most had died from bullet wounds.

[...]

Communications are tightly controlled, and Benghazi is not accessible to international journalists.

Human Rights Watch said 84 people were killed in the city on Saturday, bringing the death toll in four days of clashes mainly in the east of the country to 173 before Sunday's violence.

"A massacre took place here last night," one resident, who did not want to be named, told Reuters by telephone on Sunday.

A leading tribal figure who requested anonymity said security forces, mainly confined to a compound, had been venturing out of their barracks and shooting protesters in the street in "cat and mouse chases".

Clashes were taking place on a road leading to a cemetery where thousands had gone to bury the dead.

The most violent scenes so far of the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world were seen in its most repressive country as Muammar Gaddafi appeared to be relying on brute force to crush what began last week as peaceful protests but may now threaten his 41-year rule.But the eyes of the world were on Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya where shocked witnesses talked of "massacres" and described corpses shot in the head, chest or neck piling up in hospitals running short of blood and medicines.

[...]

Estimates of the total number of fatalities over six days of unprecedented unrest ranged from 173 to 285. Some opposition sources gave figures as high as 500.

Gaddafi's sons, Khamis and Saadi, and intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi were reportedly commanding efforts to crush the protests in Benghazi, the country's second city, where buildings were ransacked and troops and police forced to retreat to a compound to pick off demonstrators with sniper and artillery fire.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Saudi newspaper, quoted sources close to the Gaddafi family as saying they would "die on Libyan soil" rather than give up power like the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia.

Facts were hard to pin down in the face of a news blackout that included jamming of the signal of the al-Jazeera satellite TV network and interference with telephone and internet connections. But there were multiple claims of the army firing into crowds and the targeting of mourners at the funerals of those killed on Saturday. The Libya al-Yawm news website quoted one local doctor as saying that 285 people had died in Benghazi alone.

"Now people are dying we've got nothing else to live for," a student blogger told the Guardian. "What needs to happen now is for the killing to to stop. But that won't happen until he [Gaddafi] is out. We just want to be able to live like human beings. Nothing will happen until protests really kick off in Tripoli, the capital. It's like a pressure cooker. People are boiling up inside. I'm not even afraid any more. Once I wouldn't have spoken at all by phone. Now I don't care."

Libyans protesting against Muammar Gaddafi's rule appeared to control the streets of Benghazi on Sunday, even though the security forces have killed scores in the bloodiest of multiple revolts now rocking the Arab world.

Witnesses said Libya's second city was in chaos, with government buildings ransacked and troops and police forced to retreat to a fortified compound, from where they picked off demonstrators with sniper and heavy-weapons fire.

"The security forces are in their barracks and the city is in a state of civil mutiny," one witness told Reuters.

[...][But Libya watchers said an Egyptian-style nationwide revolt was unlikely as regional grievances were a factor in the unrest.

Gaddafi has less support in the east but is respected by many Libyans despite the absence of Western-style democracy. And Libya's oil wealth allows him to spread largesse to smooth over social problems.

But several people in Benghazi hospitals, reached by telephone, said they believed as many as 200 had been killed and more than 800 wounded there on Saturday alone. Witnesses indicated that many had been killed by machine-gun fire.

The fires are raging across the Mideast:

There were also large protests on Sunday in Yemen, Tunisia and, for the first time, Morocco. And Iranian security forces violently suppressed attempted demonstrations in Tehran and other cities around the country.

Again, Benghazi:

[...]

But more than a thousand other members of the security forces had hardly surrendered. They were concentrated a few miles away from the courthouse in a barracks in the neighborhood of Berqa. Witnesses said young protesters were attempting suicidal attacks on the barracks with thrown rocks, stun grenades usually used for fishing, or occasionally vehicles stolen from the security forces. But the security forces responded by shooting from the cover of the fortified building, while others shot from vehicles as they cruised the side streets.

Some protesters said they were crying and celebrating even as the toll rose. “Despite the pain and victims, we are happy because the blood of our sons was not spilled in vain,” said Amal Mohaity, a lawyer and human rights activist. “Mark my words: Qaddafi is coming down, he is coming down, he is coming down.”

There were reports of uprisings in other cities along the coast in the eastern part of the country as well. Roughly 70 miles east, in the port city of Darnah, one witness said that five had died in clashes with the police on Thursday but that by Sunday the protesters had set fire to the security headquarters and the police had pulled out. “Right now, people are terrified,” said Ashraf Tarbah, a public employee, “and they are praying for the people of Benghazi.”

Witnesses in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, a stronghold of security forces in the West of the country, said Sunday that uprisings had broken out in three working class suburbs there Saturday night but were quickly dispersed by police. News accounts, opposition figures outside the country and protesters using Twitter and Facebook and described unrest in Zantan and Baida, the third largest city, as well. But those reports could not be confirmed.

The Libyan government, meanwhile, has attempted to impose a near total blackout on the country. Foreign journalists cannot enter. Internet access has been almost totally cut off, with only occasional access, though some protesters appear to be using satellite connections or phoning information to services outside the country. Several people and intermediaries said Libyans were afraid to talk to the foreign press over the phone for fear of reprisals from the security forces.

Benghazi, the traditional hub of the country’s eastern province, has long been a center of opposition to the Qaddafi government centered in Tripoli. In 1996, it was the site of a massacre at the Abu Slim prison, when security forces shot more than 1,000 prisoners. Those killings have since become a major rallying point for Qaddafi critics there.

Opponents of the regime had set Thursday, Feb. 17, as the day of a demonstration dubbed the “day of rage” after an earlier protest in Egypt. But on Tuesday, the security forces detained a prominent opposition lawyer, Fathi Terbil, who represented many of the families of prisoners killed in the massacre, and members of the families led the protesters into the streets the next day.

By Sunday, Fathi Terbil had been released and set up a live online video broadcast that appeared to emanate from the roof of the Benghazi courthouse overlooking what residents call their Tahrir Square. “Free Libya Radio,” he called it.

“We are expecting people to die today, more people than before,” Mr. Terbil said early Sunday, before the latest round of funerals and shootings began.

“If anything happens to us today, we are not going to leave this place,” he said. “I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid to lose the battle, that’s why I want the media to see what’s going on.”

“At least if we die, so many people can witness, I can protest from everywhere,” he added, “Long live a free Libya. We are determined to fight till the end for our country.”

A group of 50 prominent Libyan Muslim religious leaders issues an appeal to Muslims in the security forces to stop participating the violence against protesters. “We appeal to every Muslim, within the regime or assisting it in any way, to recognize that the killing of innocent human beings is forbidden by our Creator and by His beloved Prophet of Compassion (peace be upon him),” the statement declared, according to Reuters reported. “Do NOT kill your brothers and sisters. STOP the massacre NOW!”

Again, this is a revolution of 2011, online, unchecked by borders:

Over Twitter, Facebook and online social networks, Libyans were calling Sunday for help from across the eastern border in Egypt, pleading for sympathetic Egyptians to bring medical supplies to help with revolt. And Egyptians, with the help of Libyans living abroad, were organizing aid convoys to the border.

[...] Epitaphs for the Mubarak government all note that the mobilizing power of the Internet was one of the Egyptian opposition’s most potent weapons. But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government’s ferocious counterattack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness. In a span of minutes just after midnight on Jan. 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet.

[...]

For all the Internet’s vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipelines that carry information across the country and out into the world.

Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized. In Syria, for example, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment dominates the infrastructure, and the bulk of the international traffic flows through a single pipeline to Cyprus. Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have the same sort of dominant, state-controlled carrier.

Over the past several days, activists in Bahrain and Iran say they have seen strong evidence of severe Internet slowdowns amid protests there. Concerns over the potential for a government shutdown are particularly high in North African countries, most of which rely on a just a small number of fiber-optic lines for most of their international Internet traffic.

This can and will and is happening elsewhere:

[...]

China, for example, has built an elaborate national filtering system known as the Golden Shield Project, and in 2009 it shut down cellphone and Internet service amid unrest in the Muslim region of Xinjiang. Nepal’s government briefly disconnected from the Internet in the face of civil unrest in 2005, and so did Myanmar’s government in 2007.

But until Jan. 28 in Egypt, no country had revealed that control of those choke points could allow the government to shut down the Internet almost entirely.

There has been intense debate both inside and outside Egypt on whether the cutoff at 26 Ramses Street was accomplished by surgically tampering with the software mechanism that defines how networks at the core of the Internet communicate with one another, or by a blunt approach: simply cutting off the power to the router computers that connect Egypt to the outside world.

But either way, the international portals were shut, and the domestic system reeled from the blow.

It's not enough. Information wants to be free, and people want freedom even more:

For some of the protesters facing Bahrain’s heavily armed security forces in and around Pearl Square in Manama, the most powerful weapon against shotguns and tear gas has been the tiny camera inside their cellphones.

A novelty less than a decade ago, the cellphone camera has become a vital tool to document the government response to the unrest that has spread through the Middle East and North Africa.

Recognizing the power of such documentation, human rights groups have published guides and provided training on how to use cellphone cameras effectively.

“You finally have a video technology that can fit into the palm of one person’s hand, and what the person can capture can end up around the world,” said James E. Katz, director of the Rutgers Center for Mobile Communication Studies. “This is the dagger at the throat of the creaky old regimes that, through the manipulation of these old centralized technologies, have been able to smother the public’s voice.”

In Tunisia, cellphones were used to capture video images of the first protests in Sidi Bouzid in December, which helped spread unrest to other parts of the country. The uploaded images also prompted producers at Al Jazeera, the satellite television network, to begin focusing on the revolt, which toppled the Tunisian government in mid-January and set the stage for the demonstrations in Egypt.

How do these videos get out?

[...] Among the sites, Bambuser has stood out as a way to stream video. Mans Adler, the site’s co-founder, said it had 15,000 registered users in Egypt, most of whom signed up just before last November’s election. He said there were more than 10,000 videos on the site that were produced around the time of the election, focusing on activity at the polls, in what appeared to be an organized effort.

Afterward, the level of activity settled down to 800 to 2,000 videos a day, but then soared back to 10,000 a day again when the mass protests erupted in Egypt last month, he said.

In Bahrain, the government has blocked access to Bambuser.

At training sessions to help activists use their cameras, Bassem Samir, the executive director of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, said that improving the quality of the images and video was a high priority.

“Videos are stories,” said Mr. Samir. “What happened on the 25th and 28th of January, it’s a story. It’s like a story of people who were asking for freedom and democracy, and we had, like, five or three minutes to tell it.”

By the way: Robert Mackey contributed reporting.

What can we see? This:

51 minutes ago, as of 2 p.m., Pacific time:

The revolution is now, and it is live, and people are dying, and you are there.

In his first major speech since unrest began last week, Col Gaddafi said the whole world looked up to Libya and that protests were "serving the devil".

Reading from the country's constitution, he said enemies of Libya would be executed.

The protesters had been given drink and drugs, he said, frequently shouting and banging his fist on the table as the address continued.

He called on "those who love Muammar Gaddafi" to come on to the streets in support of him, telling them not to be afraid of the "gangs".

"Come out of your homes, attack them in their dens. Withdraw your children from the streets. They are drugging your children, they are making your children drunk and sending them to hell," he said.

"If matters require, we will use force, according to international law and the Libyan constitution," and warned that the country could descend into civil war or be occupied by the US if protests continued.

The BBC's Frank Gardner said it was an extraordinary speech even by Col Gaddafi's usual standards, full of theatrical defiance against almost everyone.

He appears completely divorced from reality, says our correspondent, saying that he had not authorised the army to use force, despite opposition statements that more than 500 people have been killed and more than 1,000 are missing.

Group of army officers have also issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to "join the people" and help remove Gaddafi.

Last Modified: 22 Feb 2011 05:03 GMT

[...]

Two Libyan air force jets landed in Malta on Monday and their pilots have asked for political asylum.

The pilots claimed to have defected after refusing to follow orders to attack civilians protesting in Benghazi in Libya.

The pilots, who said they were colonels in the Libyan air force, were being questioned by authorities in an attempt to verify their identities.

Meanwhile, a group of Libyan army officers have issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to "join the people" and help remove Muammar Gaddafi.

The officers urged the rest of the Libyan army to march to Tripoli.

[...]

li Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to the United States, called for the Libyan leader's resignation, telling the Associated Press news agency on Monday night that Gaddafi must step down and give Libyans a chance "to make their future".

He said he was not resigning, as he worked for the Libyan people.

On Tuesday, Ali el-Essawi, Libya's ambassador to India who has resigned in protest against the violence used against demonstrators, told Al Jazeera that warplanes had been used to bomb civilians, and that government forces, including "foreigners" were "killing Libyans". He described the violence as a "massacre", and called for the UN to declare a no-fly zone over Libya.

"Now [the UN security council] needs to prove that they believe in human rights ... and to prove to us that they really have these principles in their hearts," he said.

Late on Monday, A.H. Elimam, Libya's ambassador to Bangladesh, resigned to protest against the killing of his family members by government soldiers.

Earlier on Monday, diplomats at Libya's mission to the United Nations sided with the revolt against their country's leader and called on the Libyan army to help overthrow "the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi."

In a statement issued as protests erupted across Libya, the mission's deputy chief and other staff said they were serving the Libyan people, demanded "the removal of the regime immediately" and urged other Libyan embassies to follow suit.

I'm revising my statement of hours ago. There will be blood, but this is falling fast, and I still make no hard predictions, but won't be surprised at either civil war, but mostly I now suspect Qaddafi will be fleeing or dead within the next two weeks, if not sooner. Very possibly within the week. Or by tomorrow. Anyone want to open a pool?

[...] I have already seen reports that NATO has sternly warned Libya against further violence against its people. Making that credible could mean the declaration and enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya, presumably by NATO, to prevent the use of military aircraft against the protestors. It could also mean a clear declaration that members of the regime and military will be held individually responsible for any future deaths. The U.S. should call for an urgent, immediate Security Council meeting and push for a strong resolution condeming Libya's use of violence and authorizing targeted sanctions against the regime.

At this point, it's possible that before the bureaucracies could move, it will be unnecessary, but doing this immediately, NOW, would seem a good idea.

[...] Libyans fleeing across the country’s western border into Tunisia reported fighting over the past two nights in the town of Sabratha, home of an important Roman archeological site 50 miles west of Tripoli. Thousands of Libyan forces loyal to Col. Qaddafi have deployed there, according to Reuters. [...] There were also reports of fighting in Misurata, a provincial center 130 miles west of the capital. [...] A local radio station that had been broadcasting opposition messages was reported to have been attacked. In the southern city of Sabha, considered a Qaddafi stronghold, large protests were also reported. [...]

In Tripoli, the streets were relatively quiet Wednesday morning, a resident said, but armed mercenaries were still in the streets. A bloody crackdown drove protesters from the streets on Tuesday, and residents had described a state of terror.

“All the government buildings in Tripoli are burned down,” one resident said. “But the mercenaries, they have weapons. The Libyans don’t have weapons, they will kill you.”

[...]

The country’s long-serving interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, announced his defection to the opposition Tuesday night, urging the Libyan Army to join the people and their “legitimate demands.” State media, however, claimed he had been kidnapped by “gangs.”

Mr. Abidi said Wednesday that he had decided to resign after the people of Benghazi were gunned down with machine guns. In an interview with CNN, he said he had argued with Colonel Qaddafi’s intention to use airplanes to bomb that city, the nation’s second largest, warning it would kill thousands.

After the televised speech by Colonel Qaddafi, thousands of his supporters had converged in the city’s central Green Square on Tuesday night, wearing green bandannas and brandishing large machetes.

Many loaded into trucks headed for the outlying areas of the city, where they occupied traffic intersections and appeared to be massing for neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches.

“It looks like they have been given a green light to kill these people,” one witness said. [...]

But as they clamped down on the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces did not appear to make any attempt to take back the growing number of towns in the east that had in effect declared their independence and set up informal opposition governments. For now, there is little indication of what will replace the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s authority in broad parts of the country other than simmering anarchy.

Only around the town of Ajdabiya, south of the revolt’s center in Benghazi, were Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces and militia still clashing with protesters along the road to the colonel’s hometown, Surt.

The widening gap between the capital and the eastern countryside underscored the radically different trajectory of the Libyan revolt from the others that recently toppled Arab autocrats on Libya’s western and eastern borders, in Tunisia and Egypt.

Though the Libyan revolt began with a relatively organized core of longtime government critics in Benghazi, its spread to the capital was swift and spontaneous, outracing any efforts to coordinate the protests.

Colonel Qaddafi has lashed out with a level of violence unseen in either of the other uprisings, partly by importing foreigners without ties to the Libyan people. His four decades of idiosyncratic one-man rule have left the country without any national institutions — not even a unified or disciplined military — that could tame his retribution or provide the framework for a transitional government.

[...]

He urged citizens to take to the streets and beat back the protesters, and he described himself in sweeping, megalomaniacal terms. “Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution,” he declared.

In Tobruk, an eastern city that joined the uprising almost as soon as it began, a resident watching the speech in the main square reacted by throwing a rock at Colonel Qaddafi’s face as it was broadcast on a large television. And in a cafe not far from Tobruk, Fawzi Labada, a bus driver, looked incredulously at the screen. “He is weak now,” he said. “He’s a liar, a big liar. He will hang.”

[,,,]

The gap between Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli and the insurrection in the east recalled Libya’s pre-1931 past as three different countries — Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica — and underscored the challenge facing its insurrection.

Many analysts have suggested that Colonel Qaddafi seemed to fear the development of any national institutions or networks that might check his power, and he has kept even his military divided into battalions, each loyal mainly to its own officers.

That has set the stage for heavy defections during the revolt — rebels in the east said some government forces had simply abandoned their uniforms to join the cause. But it also means that Libya’s military is unlikely to play the stabilizing role its Tunisian or Egyptian counterparts did.

[...]

Tobruk residents said neighboring cities — including Dernah, Al Qubaa, Bayda and El Marij — were also quiet, and effectively ruled by the opposition.

The government lost control of Tobruk almost immediately, according to Gamal Shallouf, a marine biologist who has become an informal press officer in the city.

Soldiers took off their uniforms on Friday and Saturday, taking the side of protesters, who burned the police station and another government building, smashing a large stone monument of Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book. Four people were killed during clashes here, residents said.

Salah Algheriani, who works for the state-owned Gulf Oil company, talked about the sea change in Tobruk, where everyone was suddenly full of loud opinions and hope, including the hope that young people might stop leaving the country for Europe.

“The taste of freedom is very delicious,” he said.

Soon the tyrant will be dead. Who or what will replace him? Big question. All italics above are mine.

Comments

I would have bet that Libya would be the last of the north African autocracies to fall. There seemed to be less connection to the outside world, and fewer of the economic factors that might kick-start a rebellion. And between Gaddafi's oil money and his ruthlessness, I figured he would quickly trash anything that did get started.

But it looks like I may have been very wrong. Happy to be wrong, mind, and I hope it turns out I was.

On February 20th, 2011 at 18:00 EST, he gave a controversial speech on Libyan State TV. In his speech, he blamed the unrest in Libya on drug taking foreign elements he repeatedly referred to as "thugs," declared that the stability of Libya and people's access to oil money was threatened, that wages would be raised, and that the security forces would not hesitate to use force.

Meanwhile:

Moatassem-Billah Gaddafi (also translated as Mutassim) is the fourth son of Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi and the National Security Advisor of Libya since 2010.[1]

So, um....

But so far it's just unconfirmed reports that "Libyan diplomat Hussein Sadiq in Beijing China" has said this, so may just be rumor.

The son of the Libyan leader, Saif el-Islam Gaddafi appeared to make concessions to protesters in a national television address on Sunday night, but also warned of the dangers of civil war.

Although he called the deaths of protesters “a tragedy”, he said the numbers were exaggerated and blamed blamed separatist movements and political, trade union and Islamist organisations for pursuing a separatist agenda.

Speaking without clear notes, Mr Gaddafi said some protesters had seized control of some military bases and tanks and that Libya was going through “major chaos”. Thousands were prepared to march on Tripoli and Benghazi to stand up for his father Muammer Gaddafi and that the army stood behind the regime and would fight to the last man.

Mr Gaddafi insisted that Libya was not Egypt or Tunisia, but said a general popular congress would meet on Monday to discuss a “clear” reform agenda.

“We will have a new Libya, one we have dreamed of. ... But we can have reforms without destroying out country.”

He spent several years in Egypt following an internal leadership dispute.

Independent terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann, writing about the death in Libya of Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi, a former captive in the CIA's "high value detainee" program, suggested Kadhafi had played a role in the death.[1] Under torture directed by the CIA Al Libi confessed to using trainers from Iraq to train jihadists how to use Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Senior officials in the George W. Bush Presidency cited Al Libi's confession as proof of Al Qaeda's ties to Iraq and proof that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction.

After several years of speculation as to what had happened to Al Libi, when it became clear the confessions wrung from him were false, human rights workers found he was being held in a Libyan prison.[1] They tried to make arrangements to meet with him, only to be informed he had committed suicide.

Kohlmann wrote that Al Libi's death followed shortly after a meeting between Moatessem-Billal Kadhafi and Omar Suleiman, a senior Egyptian intelligence official.[1] Kohlmann wrote that the reports in the Libyan press about Al Libi's death were authorized by his elder brother and rival, heir apparent Saif al-Islam Muammar Al-Gaddafi.

Lion of the Desert is a 1981 Libyan historical action film starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II. It was directed by Moustapha Akkad and funded by Muammar al-Gaddafi's government.

20 February 2011 Last updated at 18:42 ET Sayf al-Islam Gaddafi has appeared on Libyan TV and accused people outside Libya of provoking violence, adding that the reported numbers of deaths in anti-government protests were "imaginary".

He said this area of the world was "going through an earthquake" and people were trying to copy what was going on in Egypt.

He claimed "a few people have died" in clashes where "the aim was to be violent against the police" and he said the army was not trained to deal with riots.

[...] The air strike killed 45 Libyan soldiers and government officials, and 15 civilians. Forewarned by a telephone call from Malta's Prime Minister, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, that unauthorized aircraft were flying over Maltese airspace heading south towards Tripoli, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his family rushed out of their residence in the Bab al Aziziya compound moments before the bombs dropped. Gaddafi escaped injury but his 15-month-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed, and two of his sons were injured.[7] However, according to Giulio Andreotti and Abdel Rahman Shalgham, it was Bettino Craxi who warned Gaddafi.[8]

Thanks, Gary. When I'm an old man (hopefully), thinking back about this time in history (because I think this will be one of those times in history that most people, alive and aware at the time, will remember for the rest of their lives) I'll be thinking of you and ObWi along with all the rest of it. This is getting big, and this is getting bigger. Hoping for the best, here at my suburban laptop.

The Libyans aren't the only ones who remember Operation El Dorado Canyon -- I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that the US has in any way supported Gaddafi.

I remember the night of the attack, vividly: Reagan announced it, then later that night in Philadelphia, where I was living at the time, there was a loud thunderstorm. I woke up with a desperate flare of panic, thinking *we* were being bombed in retaliation.

I just want to take a minute a thank you for this post and the links and comments on the Middle East and North Africa events. I am not as good at finding and tracking the breadth of this coverage and info as you and I really appreciate the effort it takes to keep up with the cross section. PLEASE, keep updating this or another post as you are able.

I've updated, and I direct people's attention to update to post on Gadaffi's new televised speech.

Doctor, I've seen endlessly stranger spams; that's just a simple paid spammer, and you'll note that the URL has mysteriously changed. :-)

There are lots of people in China and South Korea and everywhere in the world there are poor people with internet cafes, or here in America who are suckered into the spamming equivalent of gold farming.

This is why it's crucial that spam be whacked like a mole ASAP. The real spammers, the industrial ones, use trackbacks to tell when a spam stays up, and as as soon as they see that, they know they've hit a security hole, and they come back, they report it on the spam networks to the other spammers, and robots start flooding, as well as paid humans, and soon you're flooded.

The only way to prevent that is to whack the mole ASAP.

Which is why it's important to have the SuperUser password spread to all trusted bloggers, which might be everyone, since we should all trust each other, or why should we be blogging together, so we can all work together, as our copious spare time allows, to cover each other, and keep the blog best as possible, and not siloize by thread, if possible.

Also, the community gets enlisted to write to the kitty, the email gets monitored, sub-administrators get recruited, one delegates and trees, and this is how social blogging works.

Just the advice of someone who has been doing this since 2001, watching it earlier, watching how it worked, and creating the same thing on Usenet hierarchies since 1995, and doing it and watching how it worked since first running all volunteer science fiction conventions of up to 8000 attendees, and a staff of over 800, as well as all volunteer sf organizations of smaller numbers, since age 16, and 1974. :-)

We can all only do what limited amount our limited time allows, and writers should stay as writers as they want, but organizing as above is how a blog builds community and grows, or at least stays healthy, I observe. Just, as russell says, my $.02, if you'll pardon the editorializing. :-)

But as they clamped down on the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces did not appear to make any attempt to take back the growing number of towns in the east that had in effect declared their independence and set up informal opposition governments. For now, there is little indication of what will replace the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s authority in broad parts of the country other than simmering anarchy. [...] But as they clamped down on the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces did not appear to make any attempt to take back the growing number of towns in the east that had in effect declared their independence and set up informal opposition governments. For now, there is little indication of what will replace the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s authority in broad parts of the country other than simmering anarchy. [...] The widening gap between the capital and the eastern countryside underscored the radically different trajectory of the Libyan revolt from the others that recently toppled Arab autocrats on Libya’s western and eastern borders, in Tunisia and Egypt. [...[ His four decades of idiosyncratic one-man rule have left the country without any national institutions — not even a unified or disciplined military — that could tame his retribution or provide the framework for a transitional government.

[...] he has kept even his military divided into battalions, each loyal mainly to its own officers. [...] Libya’s military is unlikely to play the stabilizing role its Tunisian or Egyptian counterparts did.

Gary, you suggested in another thread that the US impose a 'no fly zone'. I wish I could agree. Pre-Iraq I probably would have. I can't see shooting down Libyan fighters and choppers and not shooting up their tanks or bombing pro-gov't troop concentrations. Not doing so would simply be saying, "you can't bomb your people, but tanks and machine guns are ok." What's happening over there is pretty horrible. Unfortunately, our good will in that corner of the world is nil and anyone we help automatically becomes our agent and hence a pariah. We have to stay out of this. As pleasing as canceling that bastard's ticket might otherwise be.

"Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Thursday blamed the violence in his country on young people, who he said are taking some sort of pills and being exploited by Osama bin Laden.

Speaking by phone on state TV as reports came in of pro-Gadhafi forces killing unarmed civilians in the town of Zawiya, Gadhafi said, "Our children have been manipulated by al Qaeda."

I can't see shooting down Libyan fighters and choppers and not shooting up their tanks or bombing pro-gov't troop concentrations. Not doing so would simply be saying, "you can't bomb your people, but tanks and machine guns are ok."

I don't see how. How are we not saying "tanks and machine guns are ok" right now, but this standard?

The United States closed its embassy in Tripoli on Friday and announced plans to impose unilateral sanctions against Libya, including the freezing of billions in government assets, as the Obama administration made its most aggressive move against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi since his security forces opened fire on protesters.

Just minutes after a charter flight left Tripoli carrying the last Americans who wanted to leave Libya, officials markedly toughened the administration’s words and actions against Colonel Qaddafi, announcing that high-ranking Libyan officials who supported or participated in his violent crackdown would also see their assets frozen and might, along with Colonel Qaddafi, be subject to war crimes prosecution.

“It’s clear that Colonel Qaddafi has lost the confidence of his people,” said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, in a briefing that was delayed to allow the plane to take off because the Americans feared that the Libyan leader might harm the passengers. “His legitimacy has been reduced to zero.”

[...]

In fact, even as he was announcing that the Obama administration was cutting off military to military cooperation with the Libyan Army, Mr. Carney noted that such cooperation was “limited” — a stark contrast to the deep ties that the Pentagon has cultivated with other Arab armies.

[...]

Countering those criticisms, administration officials said they feared a hostage crisis, which tied President Obama’s hands until American citizens, diplomats and their families were evacuated from Libya. A ferry with 167 Americans left Tripoli on Friday afternoon, having been delayed for two days by 15- to 18-foot waves in the Mediterranean, and a charter plane with additional Americans left Friday night. The embassy, Mr. Carney said immediately after, “has been shuttered.”

European leaders have been more aggressive. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has called on Colonel Qaddafi to resign, a step which Mr. Obama has yet to take. But American allies and the United Nations also moved to isolate Libya diplomatically. A senior United Nations official said that the world should intervene to stop the bloodshed in Libya, and France and Britain called on the international organization to approve an arms embargo and sanctions. NATO said it was ready to help evacuate refugees.

In Geneva, the normally passive United Nations Human Rights Council voted unanimously on Friday to suspend Libya’s membership, but not before a junior delegate of the Libyan mission announced that he and his colleagues had resigned after deciding to side with the Libyan people. The gesture drew a standing ovation and a handshake from the United States ambassador, Eileen Donahoe.

In fact, administration officials said that getting the people around Colonel Qaddafi to abandon him is a key part of the American and international strategy to further isolate him. To that end, administration officials say they are supporting a British proposal to try to bring before a war crimes tribunal Colonel Qaddafi and those who support or enable his violent crackdown.

“It’s hard to do, but the point is to encourage the remaining supporters of Qaddafi to peel off,” said Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Crisis Group. “If you want to accelerate his demise, you send the message that those who do not participate in the violence might not be prosecuted for their association with the regime.”

American officials are also discussing a no-flight zone over Libya to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from using military aircraft against demonstrators. But such a move would have to be coordinated with NATO, and would require a Security Council resolution, diplomats said. Arab governments might object on sovereignty grounds.

Administration officials have avoided public discussion of additional military options. When asked whether the United States was considering using its military assets in the region — including a marine amphibious ship in the Red Sea — to support the rebellion in Libya, Mr. Carney said, “We are not taking any options off the table in the future.” But administration officials said there were no immediate plans to intervene militarily.

The administration’s measures appeared to satisfy human-rights groups, which have been urging the White House for days to act more robustly. Analysts said they wanted more details about the sanctions, but they were encouraged by signs that the United States would support the effort to have Colonel Qaddafi referred to the International Criminal Court on war-crimes charges, as well as by a special NATO meeting.

“Even if people aren’t explicitly talking about no-fly zones, the fact that NATO met today suggests there is more on people’s minds than diplomacy,” said Tom Malinowski, the director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. “I sense military contingencies are on the table.”

One complication that could speed up consideration of any military action would be evidence that Colonel Qaddafi was prepared to use his remaining stockpile of mustard gas.

The American sanctions will also include travel bans against Colonel Qaddafi and senior members of his government, and the freezing of assets, including a move to freeze all American-controlled portions of Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, administration officials said. Sanctions, once they go into effect, could have an impact on oil-rich Libya. According to an American diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, a senior Libyan official told American diplomats in January 2010 that the Libyan Investment Authority, which manages the country’s oil revenue, had $32 billion in cash, and that several American banks managed up to $500 million in each of those funds. Administration officials said they planned to go after that money as part of the punitive sanctions.

“The government of Libya has claimed that it holds as much as $130 billion in reserves and its sovereign wealth fund reportedly holds more than $70 billion in foreign assets,” an Obama administration official said. The official said that “while we are aware of certain assets owned by the Libyan government in the U.S., there are likely additional funds that we are not aware of.”

Analysts said that going after the assets of Colonel Qaddafi’s aides would probably be more effective than going after those held by the leader himself, given that he is engaged in an all-or-nothing defense of his rule.

A more draconian approach, suggested Danielle Pletka, an expert on sanctions at the American Enterprise Institute, would be to impose a trade embargo on Libya, excepting only food and other humanitarian aid.

The United Nations Security Council will discuss a proposal backed by France and Britain for multilateral sanctions, including an arms embargo and financial sanctions. But no definitive move was expected until next week. Italy, which is not in the Security Council and has deep investments in Libya, said Friday that it also backed sanctions.

So much for staying out of it, and the impossibility of a no-fly zone.

BENGHAZI, LIBYA - Army leaders in eastern Libya who have turned against Col. Moammar Gaddafi's regime are preparing to dispatch a rebel force to Tripoli to support the beleaguered uprising there, a top military official said Saturday in Benghazi. [...] Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, warned in an interview with the al-Arabiya TV network Saturday that "the signs of civil war and foreign interference have started.''

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday night to impose military and financial sanctions against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and his inner circle and to refer his regime's crackdown on protesters to a war crimes tribunal for an investigation of possible crimes against humanity.

The move came as President Obama for the first time called on Gaddafi to step down, deepening the Libyan leader's international isolation as he struggles to contain a revolt that threatens his 41-year rule. It also marked the first U.S. vote in support of a Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court, which the United States has not joined.

We might want to do something about that last, except that, of course, Republicans in Congress still oppose it, last I looked. Think they should reconsider?

[...] In a letter to the Security Council president, Libyan envoy Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam wrote that his delegation "supports the measures proposed in the draft resolution to hold to account those responsible for the armed attacks against the Libyan civilians, including [through] the International Criminal Court."

A day earlier, Shalgam announced in a tearful appearance before the Security Council that he had broken ranks with his longtime friend, mentor and leader. That announcement followed a wave of defections by Gaddafi's diplomatic corps, leaving the Libyan ruler essentially without a voice or influence outside the country.

The drama unfolded as the 15-nation council considered a package of sanctions, including an arms embargo, a travel ban and an asset freeze on Gaddafi and his associates.

British military planes entered Libyan air space to rescue oil workers and others from desert locations Saturday in a daring and secret mission meant to save those unable to flee escalating violence.

The C-130 Hercules planes, carrying Britons and other nationals, safely landed in Malta after picking up the civilians south of the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi, Defense Secretary Liam Fox said.

The rescue mission was bold because few planes have been able to fly through Libyan air space. It was not immediately clear if it was a British special forces mission, but the government has not ruled out using the SAS to evacuate Libyan oil fields and rescue trapped Britons.

McKinneyTexas:

We have to stay out of this. As pleasing as canceling that bastard's ticket might otherwise be.

So how are "we" doing on staying out of this, would you say, McKinneyTexas?

[...] Other Britons returning to London from Libya after being evacuated spoke of the chaos enveloping the North African country.

"Gangs of young Libyans had knives and machetes," said 51-year-old Paul Ellis, who works on the Great Man-Made River Project in Libya. "What they wanted was any valuables - money, laptops and mobiles. We just gave them those and the keys to cars and they just left us alone to some extent."

Mediterranean ports, meanwhile, overflowed with thousands of evacuees from Libya, and thousands more foreigners were still scrambling to flee the North African nation by sea, air or land as the security situation around the capital Tripoli deteriorated.

More than 2,800 Chinese workers landed in Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete aboard a Greek ship. Further to the west, another 2,200 Chinese arrived in Valletta, the capital of Malta, after a long journey from the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi. Hours earlier, in the dark of night, a U.S-chartered ferry dropped off over 300 passengers in Valletta who spent three days waiting to leave Libya's chaotic capital.

The sheer numbers of foreigners leaving Libya as Gadhafi's regime attacks anti-government protesters has been staggering. As of Saturday, at least 16,000 Chinese, 15,000 Turks and 1,400 Italians had been evacuated, most working in the construction and oil industries.

In addition, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council that some 22,000 people have fled across the Libyan border to Tunisia and another 15,000 crossed the border into Egypt.

Col. Malek Mihoub, a Tunisian security forces official, said that "despite the good intentions of those present," aid groups like the Red Crescent, local authorities and the Tunisian army have become overwhelmed by the flow of people fleeing Libya.

Meanwhile, France's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the French embassy in Tripoli has been closed temporarily due to the unrest. It said a French Air Force flight took 122 people - including the entire embassy staff among the 28 French nationals on board - to France on Saturday.

In an accord with Russia, France said it is temporarily conferring its interests in Libya to the Russian Embassy in Tripoli, the ministry statement said.

I read McT when he says 'we should stay out of it', he doesn't want to US to take the lead. Perhaps this is a grevious misreading, but given the principle that many conservatives often cite (though I don't know if McT has) is a concern about a loss of sovereignty, I'd like to think that he's not ruling out the use of US forces, but only as an integral part of a multi-national force.

I also read McT as suggesting that establishing a no-fly zone without also taking action against tanks and troops would be a strange line to draw. I don't think he made any argument about 'if we shoot down planes, we must blow up tanks' I think he's suggesting that a no-fly zone would be seen as a half measure and I think he has a point.

There's some much revolution going on, it is hard to keep up with everything, and I've had my eye more on Wisconsin, so I appreciate your cites, but I view this as part of the process of turning McT into someone who believes in the importance of a realistic (as opposed to a "realist" or even a "realpolitik") foreign policy that depends on international collections of players. (Actually, I don't have a precise fix on what McT's foreign policy views are so I'm not making any claims, just that an expression of hesitancy and humility concerning the US military is always appreciated)